Bryson Graham era has first head coach in Tiago Splitter

Splitter was interim HC in Portland last season

One of the least interesting coaching searches in a while has now concluded, as new head decisionmaker Bryson Graham has now made his selection in Tiago Splitter.

Like with the front office hires (including Graham himself), it’s not really sensible to provide preemptive judgement on this hire. Splitter has at least been in his position before, but only for one season and in a really unique and chaotic situation having to take over the Portland TrailBlazers early in the year.

And though Splitter did lead the Blazers into the playoffs (thanks for that!) the chaos only accelerated with new ownership coming in and all signs were that they were not going to retain and promote Splitter. Part of that may have been desire for a clean slate, but rumors abounded that the new owner had interesting ideas about how cheap they should be with coaching¹.

In the time since my last check-in here, Graham hired a couple guys from New Orleans which draws scrutiny not so much that he is bringing in ‘his people’ but that they’re all coming from an unsuccessful organization. It’s only fair to give Graham credit then to hiring Splitter from outside of his circle who came up through the San Antonio Spurs - where he spent the most time in his playing career - coaching and front office tree.

Like all coaches, especially those for teams not in contention (like the Bulls for 15 years), I’m sure Splitter will say he wants to develop young players and play fast. He didn’t really do that in Portland, but as previously stated that was a weird situation I won’t hold against him.

Still to come is news on who is going to be on Splitter’s coaching staff. The Bulls like to have some holdovers and/or ownership spies so there has been no mass firings yet (including that of Billy Donovan’s son), with lead assistant Wes Unseld Jr. rumored to be a finalist in this head job but may stay - I assume there’s club control on his contract - even after losing out to Splitter.

1. Bulls taking advantage of the cheaper franchise?!? They don’t pay their front office much, but did start to give top-10 salaries to coaches recently (with a bottom-1 salary to Jim Boylen). There’s also the fun historical anecdote that Jerry Reinsdorf refuses to negotiate coaching salaries with an agent.